My third grade teacher would post a giant construction paper calendar on the first day of each month of the school year, and the one for March intrigued me in particular. Next to March 1st, she wrote In like a Lion. Next to March 31st, she wrote Out like a Lamb.
This made no sense to me.
I waited curiously for her explanation—turns out, she was referring to how the month of March typically played out in northeastern Ohio back then. Indeed, it roared in with frigid temperatures and even a snowstorm or two, but, by the end of the month, it left softness in its wake—a whiff of spring, the kindness of sunshine, and of course, the promise of summer vacation.
Now, decades later, when March rolls around, I still think of that calendar display. Every time I date a document or schedule an appointment, those words float back to me, the words that puzzled me as a child— in like a lion, out like a lamb.
And when they do, I stop and look outside hopefully after the long stretch of cold, dark, cloudy, midwestern winter months. From time to time, I slip out the door, feeling either the coolness or warmth, taking in either the drabness or light—whatever March is offering on that particular day.
But as we approach the end of March 2025, I realize I haven’t followed that yearly ritual, stepping outside to feel what’s actually happening in the natural world. Apart from a few winter walks, I've remained inside during these months, absorbed in my digital world, working toward a goal that’s important to me, but one that has kept me stuck on a computer screen and in my own mind.
Despite my lack of attention, spring has been coming on gradually. The season is shifting, as is the natural world, preparing for the explosion of rich, green life.
For most of human history, our existence has been intertwined with the outdoors, cognizant of nature’s cycles and rhythms, tracking the course of the sun and moon, watching dark skies and bright stars. We marked the seasons—not just the climate phases in our particular corners of the world, but also the passage of time and our lives.
We grounded into our bodies, feeling Earth around us, regaining our perspective and our touch with reality. We remembered that our human time happened within the context of cosmic time, and we ourselves were the bridge, the nexus, the joinder.
***
One day last week, I raised my head from my computer and realized that I'd reached a milestone on the way to my goal. I was about to put my head back down again and keep going, but fortunately, a friend intervened. Stop, she urged. Go outside, take off your shoes, put your feet in the grass. Just be there.
So I stepped outside—reluctantly at first. It took a few minutes . . . and then I relaxed. I touched the bark of the giant ash tree anchoring my yard. I wiggled my toes. I lifted my face to the sun. I listened to windchimes and birdsong.
A few years ago, I wrote the following poem about deliberately marking my life as it passes. (I’m obviously a person who needs repeated reminders!) It's about acknowledging my days and moments and celebrating the fact that I get to be here, to live on this beautiful Earth, to experience all of this.
Seeds
When I cleared the old photos and newspapers, I found a seed packet—Pollinator Garden—at the bottom of my mother’s attic bureau that the Salvation Army wouldn’t take because it’s in such bad shape,
and on a whim I poured those seeds into the soil by the front door, just under the window, and I didn’t even read the instructions before tossing the packet in the trash, and I went about my life without sensing the alchemy occurring—
seeds softening as they drank water and sipped sunshine, boundaries thinning as they allowed the world to enter them and love them, until roots burst from their casings and sprouts pushed through the ground.
Now blossoms brush the sill, setting bees drunk with pleasure till they bump the glass in confusion, and not once have the blossoms admonished look what we did with your little packet of seeds,
and this brought me to tears—the seeds, the blossoms, my mother’s dusty bureau with its dusty packet, my aging body with its aging bones—that life loved us and grew through us, and I never even knew it.
***
This poem was published in Tweetspeak Poetry, as part of its Poet Laura series.
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